Author Archives: martin brown

Green Schools

Leave a reply

green school /grEn skül / n. a school building or facility that creates a healthy environment that is conducive to learning while saving energy, resources and money

To help educate and encourage construction firms and others about the benefits of sustainable schools the US Green Building Council have recently launched a site dedicated to Green Schools  According to the site, green schools, on average, save $100,000 a year, use 33% less energy, and reduce solid waste by 74%. They also increase learning potential, reduce teacher absenteeism and turnover, and provide opportunities for hands-on learning.

The site contains a number of resources, but listening to the 9min video of students talking about environmnetal stewardship as a result of their green building is very strong.  “the new building had no new smells – which is good because those smells are only chemicals” 

With criticism of the green aspects of our Building Schools for the Future it would be good to hear of similar ‘awareness‘ resources in the UK.

Webinar – Code for Sustainable Homes

Leave a reply

Further to the last post on carbon neutral and Code for Sustainable Homes, I am reminded from Phil’s blog over at Sustainability Blog that Building are running an on line semiar– a webinar on Code for Sustainable Homes.

Register and details here. 

(Unfortunately I am running a real life event at UCLAN, otherwise I would be there, or here, in front of wood stove fire with laptop!)

Carbon neutral or zero – defined?

Leave a reply

Another excellent report from the Centre for Integrated Sustainability Analysis, Carbon Sense and Sensibility offers a definition of carbon neutral by looking at 11 websites that offer carbon neutrality calculators and services (offsets).

The definition is based around the idea of concept of measuring a carbon footprint and then seeking to cancel out that footprints with some kind of equal but opposite behaviour or consequence.

A must read for any organisation considering offsets to achieve neutrality or any carbon offset

.. you need to ask questions about just what carbon you are responsible for, how it is being measured and then exactly where the carbon credits have come from, how reductions have been verified and how you will know that once you have paid for those reductions they are retired so that nobody else can buy them …

gulp…

This then is very different from zero carbon -where activities are not neutralised but reduced to zero through ‘improvement’ activities and just doing things differently, and certainly not through offsetting.   (and the Code for Sustainable Homes calls for Zero Carbon – not carbon neutral ?)

A zero energy building (ZEB) or net zero energy building is a general term applied to a building with a net energy consumption of zero over a typical year.In October 2007, The Uk Green Building Council warned that few zero carbon homes were actually being built as as the criteria for carbon neutral stamp relief was so stringent. However, although “It’s not a legal obligation that zero carbon homes are built now”, “building regulations are being increased in line with the Code for Sustainable Homes over the next nine years”

Unravelling carbon footprints in supply chains

Leave a reply

We hear allot about supply chain management within our industry, and until recently mainly in the context of improving value, relationships, reducing costs, waste and all the nice performance improvement stuuf.

What if we add reducing the carbon or ecological footprint into the supply chain management debate.

An excellent paper from the Centre for Integrated Sustainability Analysis – Unravelling the Impacts of Supply Chains – A new Triple Bottom Line accounting approach looks at just this issue.

It also raises the fundamental question on calculating carbon footprints – we are concerned in the main, at the moment, with direct or primary emissions – ie those we, or an organisation are directly responsible for,  How about those (secondary) emissions upstream, through the supply chain activities, raw material production etc, which in the context of a construction footprint surely must be taken into account.
We have seen this exercise start and stop within other sectors. for example the large supermarket organisation – but will it only be a matter of time before a wider view on the construction carbon emissions and contribution is expected within the built environment?

Is collaboration working? – your views sought …

Leave a reply

The Strategic Forum, as apart of the Accelerating Change programme set the industry a target for 50% (by volume) of the UK construction industry to be undertaken in an integrated manner by the end of 2007. As we approach that milestone, the question is are we achieving that target

This target also appears as the centerpiece of the Defra / Strategic Forum Strategy for Sustainable Construction currently out for consultation.

Last year the Constructing Excellence Building Estates (formely Be) held an inetegrated workshop, comprising of the top 100 thinkers and practitioners of integrated working in the (built environment) industry and asked the question are we on track to this target. The conclusion was illuminating:

How are you doing as an organisation to (achieve this target):

Well Ahead 19%

On Course 19%

A Bit Behind 27%

Nowhere Near 35%

How are we doing as an industry to (achieve this target):

Well Ahead 0%

On Course 3%

A Bit Behind 38%

Nowhere Near 59%

Recently the Collaborative Working Champion group of CE, as part of their ongoing collabaoative state of the industry survey found that only 27% of the industry was fully collaborative, and 35% partly collaborative.

Now, throught the SF, I have been asked to publisice a further much wider survey that needs your input:

The Strategic Forum for Construction is seeking information from firms in the construction industry about their experiences of the barriers to project team integration and supply chain integration. This information will be used to develop a programme to further promote integration within the industry.

The Forum would like to hear from all interested parties – their questionnaire can be completed on line or downloaded here and http://www.strategicforum.org.uk/itgs.shtml All returned information will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Barriers so far identified include:

  • Industry Culture
  • Industry Capabilities and Capacity
  • Procurement, Contacts and Payments
  • Engagement with the Supply Chain
  • Understanding of Cost v Value v Risk

A detailed review of each of these barriers is also available on the Strategic Forum website.

View document on Barriers to Integration MS Word

At the same time, the Construction Clients’ Group (CCG) is launching a survey of its own members in November. Their aim is to establish how many CCG members are practising an integrated approach. This can be completed at

http://www.constructingexcellence.org.uk/sectorforums/constructionclientsgroup/

Martin Nielsen, who chairs the Forum’s Integration Task Group, said: “We want as much of the industry as possible to respond to this survey. The views of clients and companies from all parts of the supply side are welcomed. Their responses will help to shape the future work of the Strategic Forum.”

Mike Davies, Chairman of the Strategic Forum for Construction: “We are hoping that through these two surveys we will get a real feel for whether project team integration and supply chain integration are increasing across the industry. We are also hoping to learn from these surveys how some of the key barriers to integration can be overcome.”

Please take the time to respond. Comments also welcome here !

Second Life: will code really be the new bricks and mortar?

Leave a reply

Second Life: will code really be the new bricks and mortar, or ‘clicks’ and mortar? ….

Saturdays Telegraph carried an article looking at a new lifestyle magazine aimed at homeowners – Prim Perfect is a virtual magazine to give virtual people advice on virtual furniture to put in a virtual homes and expects to make real money.

And yet it is probably going to be – if it is not already – the best-read magazine on the subject of bricks and mortar on the planet. Prim Perfect has a potential global readership in the hundreds of thousands.   Pauline Woolley is Prim Perfect founder and editor.  

Read more in Daily Telegraph

Also New York Times

(Fairsnape has a presence within Second Life .  For more information on Second Life and Built Environment issues, or a guided tour in SL, contact through Fairslife)

Get Sus! promotion…

Leave a reply

Melanie over at Get Sus is having currently holding a promotion drive to attract more subscribers to her excellent (and free!) Get Sus e-mail newsletter service that offers sustainable construction news for undergraduates, post-grads and professionals with an interest in sustainability and the built environment

It covers good practice case studies, new books and websites, sources of funding, and work experience, placements and permanent vacancies.
Download the pdf flyer here for promotion news – and a chance to win a T Shirt !

Blackout Britain

Leave a reply

Invited to this campaign through facebook. (what? … you dont have an account there?)

Blackout Britain – Lights out for the Feast of Playful Darkness, Lights out for Carbon, Lights on for Pumpkins

On a serious note, from the Campaign for Dark Skies webiste:

The amount of additional carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere due to inefficient UK street-lights in the last 12 months =  541,180 tonnes

neutral, zero or offset?

Leave a reply

With the proliferation of websites and services offering to calcuate your footprint and allow you to offset, it is good to come across one site that offers a very different approach to get the offset message across.

About CheatNeutral

Cheatneutral is about offsetting infidelity. We’re the only people doing it, and Cheatneutral is a joke.

Carbon offsetting is about paying for the right to carry on emitting carbon. The Carbon offset industry sold £60 million of offsets last year, and is rapidly growing. Carbon offsetting is also a joke.

It is also very encouraging to see that the people behind Cheat Neutral support, recommend and provide links to Contraction and Convergance.  Again from their site:

  • Learn about Contraction and Convergence. C&C is a framework for agreeing a global cap on carbon emissions. We believe that to make our individual sacrifices count, we need a global framework that caps the amount of carbon emitted, creates a timeframe for reducing emissions to a safe level, and distributes carbon credits equitably. C&C satisfies all of these, and would make carbon trading fair and effective. Good resources are at  www.gci.org.uk

Post modern apathy in the built environment ?…

Leave a reply

Jonathan Glancey, the Guardian architecture critic, writing in his Guardian column today, Extinction of Engineers, bemoans the lack of skilled workers in the uk, and sees our sector as a nation of call centre operatives and customer service facility managers, threatened by a glut of postmodern apathy.   Yes.  This backs up the findings of the recent Arup report for the ASC – that we dont have the skills in the UK to address the sustainability targets and visions being set down and proposed.

In another article in the same edition  Jonathan Glancey provides a profile of Edward Cullinan, who has been designing thoughtful and sometimes daring buildings for long enough to see a number of them listed

Two comments in this article caught my attention

Cullinan remains equally in thrall to the wayward genius of Frank Lloyd Wright. The great American architect was much influenced by Voysey, even if Wright went on to design such avant garde buildings as the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Voysey’s individuality and craft and Wright’s originality and verve are forces that have inspired Cullinan throughout his 52-year career as a practising architect. “I cherish that word,” he says. “I’m always practising. And one day might even get there.”

and, in an attack on design build…

 “Good architecture does demand money. The buildings we did for the University of East London [alongside London City Airport], for example, look great from 50 metres away, but when you get up close you can see the effects of ‘design and build’ construction, meaning that the architect is not responsible for the building works. The details just aren’t good enough. The level of craftsmanship is far too low.”

Voysey and Wright were lucky that they did not have to practise their craft in a cheapskate world of “design and build”. None the less, Cullinan, more so than most contemporary British architects, has lived to shape some of the best-made, most cherished British buildings of the past 50 years, buildings that, if you could slice into them, would shine with Grade I gold.

Having spent a fair amount of time as both a project manager on architect led and design and build projects, I am not sure I entirely agree with this.  The low level of craftsmanship is a symptom of the industry’s lack of investment in skills and training over the last few decades, rather than architect-contractor forms of contract.   And, in both approaches the relationships just did not foster a spirit of collaborative working to the benefit of the building or facility, but a reinforcement of silos and hidden agendas.